A half century is not enough to read all my books

I turn 50 next year, which makes me officially an old fart. While I've never felt physically better, things are starting to slowly break down and it's increasingly impossible to pretend that I'm not closer to death than the other end.

So of course I'm wrestling with the usual existential nightmares about the obliteration of the self in the dead of the night. Aren't we all?

I always expected that dread to intensify with age, but I am disappointed to discover that wisdom is a lot harder to build up. I always thought that one day I'd wake up and be a wise old bastard, but I feel just as confused and foolish as I ever did.

Sadly, if there is one area where I do feel I've accumulated some kind of wisdom, it's with bullshit like movies and comic books. While I do have a few inane and illogical prejudices about certain slices of entertainment, I do think I've become wiser in my tastes, just by sampling more and more different wares over all these decades.

While I do feel like the dorky little shit I was when I was 18 on the inside, I've also built up enough experience to find the good stuff fairly easily.

None of this wisdom is of use to anybody else, of course. I'm the only one who gets any benefit out of it. And the wisdom that seems obvious to me might sound like madness to anybody else.

But the great part is that there is only more to come. This passion for new entertainments, new art, new styles, it's just as fierce as ever. There is just still so much more to watch and read, so much more to inhale. 

I might have been here for half a goddamn century, but I still have some way to go, and hope to get wiser still.